Follow
by argonautoida
Summary: A glimpse into Clara's post-Doctor life with Me.
Clara forgot her age. Not that it mattered. She was stuck, a perpetual 28-year-old as punishment for a mistake or a reward for bravery. But still. Every year, or every 365 days as close as she could reckon, she had a birthday. Or death day. The two seemed surprisingly interchangeable.

"What is today?" she asked.

Her companion (because it was certainly not she who was the companion, not anymore) looked at her and shrugged.

"You know I don't keep track of such things," Me replied.

Clara sighed, letting her face fall into a pout.

"Are you angry with me?"

Clara shook her head.

"Is it your birthday? Happy birthday," the other, Me, said mechanically.

"I'm not sure. I've lost track," Clara replied.

"Oh. How old were you last you remembered?"

"Four hundred and eighty-seven."

"Not a bad age. When I was around that age, they were signing the Magna Carta. I was there, actually. Would you like to go see it?"

"I'm still in a feud with King John. I think. I'm never sure with that one," Clara sighed.

"Again?"

Clara shrugged. If she were being honest, right now she wanted to just go home. Every so often, she did. She was careful to time it just right so she had a proper lifetime, an accurate lifetime, to spend with her family. So she didn't leave her father and dear, funny grandmother all alone.

To them, it had been two years since she became immortal. She didn't need to look like she was aging, not yet. Eventually, she'd put silver in her hair and find a way to do wrinkles and act like her joints and bones ached and all the things her grandmother complained of. But not yet. She was so young.

Me didn't like it when she went home. She'd gone with her once, claiming to be a friend from work with no place to go for Easter, but she hadn't liked it. She said the people were dull and that Clara should just forget them. Clara hadn't spoken to her for a week. They did that sometimes, but never for long. No one else in the world understood her like Me did and she didn't think anyone else understood Me like she did. They were stuck together. It wasn't really a choice.

"I think I'd like to go home, actually," Clara said.

Me made a face but kept quiet.

"Come with me? You can be Alice again," Clara said, already setting the navigation.

"No. Stop asking. You don't want me and your grandmother didn't like me," Me said with a roll of her eyes.

"My grandmother did like you. She said you had spunk and then spent an hour telling me about the girl she fancied in college."

"Oh," Me said.

Me had made it a rule not to fall in love and Clara didn't blame her. If she were asked, she didn't think she would have been able to define what they were to each other. Sisters, friends, acquaintances, even lovers on occasion, but less with passion and more like the old couples who seemed to be so thoroughly a part of each other that you would be certain if one died the other would follow them simply from spite. Clara didn't know what she wanted from her, honestly, and she had her flings. Great men and women throughout history as well as clever or beautiful or brave people who never made it into the books. That was all she needed.

"I'll wait for you here," Me said once their own personal TARDIS landed.

"I'll be back before you know it!" Clara said, excitement mounting.

It was just a Saturday, a normal old day, but she had plans to lunch with her father and take her grandmother out shopping. She struggled to remember events from the few days, to her family at least, that had passed since she last saw them and found herself yawning as her grandmother tried on her fifth dress. Later, she got a call to go out with some friends and she went. They drank and flirted with strangers and asked her why she never dated. She shrugged and got the sad look in her eyes that reminded them she had dated once and she had lost him. She still missed Danny. Sometimes she wished it was him instead of Me who had been fated to spend immortality with her.

She slept until noon. She hadn't meant to, but she'd been out late and more than a little drunk. She was angry with herself for forgetting, for nearly wasting another of her precious days. It didn't occur to her to call Me until she waltzed back into the diner and found Me curled around herself, gasping back tears.

Clara ran to her and wrapped her arms around her, whispering comforting words as if Me were a child while she gasped out her worry and anger. Eventually, she stopped. Eventually, she struggled free of Clara and acted like nothing was wrong.

"Where should we go now?" Me asked.

"Someplace new," Clara said.

"I think we've been everywhere."

"Nonsense! Let's go…let's go someplace dreadfully old. I want to see a star that hasn't existed for billions of years. I want to see the first life in the universe."

"And where is that?" Me asked with her small smile.

"Not a clue. Let's find out," Clara said, already going to the controls.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Me wipe away the last of her tears before she joined her.

"Let's. After all, where you go, I go," she said regally, as if it wasn't a promise made hundreds of years ago.

* * *

Early on, where Clara still ached for the Doctor and was still adjusting, she'd been reckless. Her tattoo on her wrist, a thing that read "Let Me Be Brave" in Me's archaic writing, was a relic from those times. A reminder of her last words as a mortal. After the tattoo, she had taken them someplace dangerous. An interplanetary war. She said that they would save people. That it was their duty. She was trying to be him and she was doing a poor job of it, which she knew.

She'd been shot. She'd been trying to save children and she'd been shot. The children had survived. She always made sure of that, but she wasn't sure if she'd make it. She was one hundred and fifty-two years old. It was long enough, she'd thought. But that was before she had seen half the beauty of the universe and met the third immortal, a man who reminded Me of her and knew the Doctor nearly as well as she did.

When she had woken up in the medical tent, her body encased in a machine that was breathing for her and pumping her heart, a feeling she didn't get used to despite the two weeks she had spent in it, Me had been sitting there, waiting. It was the first time she had seen her so upset.

"What were you thinking! You nearly died!" Me yelled as soon as her brown eye's popped open.

"But I didn't. And I had to help," Clara said. Her head felt thick and groggy.

"You always have to help. This…this world isn't our problem."

"So we should just let the innocent die?"

"No. Yes. No. But we can't-you can't-you're like me. You're all I have, Clara."

Me's words were like small needles striking her. Clara searched her face, but couldn't read it. It was the first and only time that had happened.

"Where you go, I go. When you die, I die. Do you understand?" Me asked.

"Yes," Clara said.

And that was it. Me read to her and they played chess or chatted. The natives of the planet thanked her and gave her a medal she had somewhere in what Me called her room of trophies.

Sometimes Clara wanted to ask Me if she loved her. She never knew exactly what she meant by it or what answer she wanted. She knew she loved Me, she didn't know how she couldn't, but she never knew what kind of love it was. Me was like a piece of her now.

One day, she would. Maybe whenever they reached the ancient world, while they watched the first being draw its first breath, she would ask. The universe might crack from the question, but then she would have her answer.

"Well?" Me asked.

"I think I know where to start at least. Either way, it'll be an adventure," Clara replied with a bright smile.

"Haven't you had enough of adventuring?" Me asked.

"Never."

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** I like to think of Clara and Me adventuring everywhere and seeing everything and not being alone. I also would watch the hell out of a show about just the two of them having adventures. I also really, really miss Clara.

Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading!


End file.
